Wednesday 30 July 2014

Canadian Rockies: Yoho National Park

July 20, 2014

We stayed in Calgary the previous night and drove to the Takakkaw Falls campsite in Yoho National Park in the morning.  The camping area is a walk-in only, but Parks Canada provides really good two-wheeled carts to transport camping gear.  We parked in the busy and huge parking lot, the Takakkaw Falls is a major tourist attraction in the Rockies.  After checking out the entire camping area we picked a site, self-registered and then brought in our gear in one of the carts.  The camping area was not very busy so we had a lot of sites to choose from, we chose a site that had a great view of the falls.  There is a constant roar from the falls which muffles the noise of fellow campers.  Takakkaw Falls campsite is very good, it is well maintained and the tenting sites are within the trees.

As it was our first hike of the season, we selected a relatively easy hike to Emerald Basin.  The hike begins at the beautiful Emerald Lake.  The tourist hordes were there in force, but once we hiked past the lake, we did not meet many other people.  We were inhaling that incredible alpine scent as we walked through the Douglas Fir and cedar forest.  When we reached the basin, a natural amphitheatre hemmed in by mountains, we had lunch on the rocks with a few marmots standing by.  The hike only took about three hours round trip and was a really good hike for our first day in the Rockies.

Click on the pictures to enlarge....

Takakkaw Falls


Emerald Lake

Emerald Basin

Marmot

Our Campsite


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